Russia returns

The US lost its cool over the Snowden leaks, and behaved like a bully internationally; it was wrong over a scramble to action in Syria. Vladimir Putin gained credence with his interventions in both situations.

Vladimir Putin has had two major international successes in recent months. In August he granted asylum to Edward Snowden, who had leaked details of the US National Security Agency’s surveillance programmes, and was able to boast that Russia was the only country capable of standing up to US pressure — unlike China, Venezuela, Ecuador and Cuba, which all buckled.

Putin’s success was partly due to the pressure that US Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama put on governments tempted to welcome Snowden. The US behaved as if Snowden were a security threat comparable to Osama bin Laden, and even persuaded its allies to deny airspace to a plane carrying the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, which was suspected of having Snowden on board. The atmosphere made Putin seem all the more audacious at home and internationally. Many of Putin’s opponents in Russia applauded his gesture, in the name of defence of human rights and civil liberties.

But Putin’s real success has been on Syria. Obama “provisionally” suspended planned air strikes on Syria after an undertaking from President Bashar al-Assad to destroy Syria’s stock of chemical weapons, under the supervision of international monitors. Until then, the US had predicted Russia would face international isolation and rebuked it for supporting the Assad regime and opposing UN sanctions. Now Putin looks like a wise statesman who has managed to avoid a military expedition with potentially disastrous consequences.

Putin’s triumph was facilitated by US miscalculations. Obama failed to persuade the UK to take part in the planned operation and was about to face a second humiliation in failing to secure the approval of Congress. Though the military action Obama had decided to support to maintain credibility was “unbelievably limited”, as US secretary of state John Kerry put it. Obama hated having to do it. The day after the agreement made possible by Putin, Izvestia carried the headline “Russia Comes to Obama’s (...)